Shift Happens is a labor of love. The author, Marcin Wichary, quit his job to start the process of writing this book1, taking 5–6 years of research, photography, design, and writing to publish. It’s a 2-volume set on keyboards, spanning over 1200 pages with beautiful photographs of many rare pieces of hardware and people using them throughout the 20th century, trying to answer questions on how the modern-day keyboard came to be, with its seemingly eclectic collection of keys and modes and layouts and shapes and sizes. It turns out they tell a lot of stories.
The books were admittedly intimidating. At 12 lbs, they’re literally the biggest books I own, and the thickness of the covers and each 600+-page volume make an impression2. The pages are packed with footnotes, Easter eggs, and typographic treats, along with full-page and inlaid photographs that complement the prose well. It took me almost a year to finish reading it—partially so I could savor the experience a bit and not binge through the chapters, and partially because I’d come across something that would entice me to toy around with my keyboards in appreciation.
The title references the Shift (⇧) key and its central role in typewriters—the revered precursor to computer keyboards3—that serves as a canonical example of how one of the keys on our keyboards came to be. Early typewriters went through their format wars, where two competing manufacturers had different ideas on how to generate upper- and lowercase letters. One used separate keys, the other went with a modifier key that would physically shift the carriage between the cases. That latter manufacturer, Remington, would emerge victorious, and the typewriter layout they produced is now what we’d call the QWERTY layout.
But back to the title, it’s also a dad-joke-level pun alluding to the messy history of typewriters and keyboards and how so much of it was not designed, organically evolving with competing standards and obsolete functions and 150+ years of transitions in how keys were used. These artifacts are everywhere: the mysterious Scroll lock, the duality of Return and Enter, and even the inherited combo of CR/LF and its inconsistencies across operating systems. As someone who picked up Dvorak 1½ decades ago on the promise of a more efficient and ergonomic typing technique, I was happy to read about the actual history of August Dvorak and his failed quest to replace QWERTY, and surprised to see the narrative QWERTY keeping typewriters from locking up debunked as myth.
Beyond the well-written paragraphs, I want to highlight the attention to detail Marcin brings to Shift Happens. The author is a self-described designer and writer, and I’d say that his first book here lives up to both vocations well. The pages are laid out with relevant and interesting photographs sewn throughout both volumes, and an additional Extras volume hints at how much work he had to do to get some of those pictures to blend in with the pages. He also went and digitized a classic font, Gorton, as a tribute to its place in typewriter history, and a couple of clever Easter eggs showed how the old equipment would produce their text right in their chapters. As much as I enjoy e-books and their convenience, this is one book whose experience cannot be faithfully captured with an EPUB.
Here’s a bittersweet recommendation: this is an awesome, nerdy book that doubles as a collector’s item. Getting a copy yourself, though, is going to be tough; the original Kickstarter closed a year ago, and there’s no indication that Wichary is looking to make on-demand copies since high-quality print materials aren’t economical in small batches4. If you can find a copy in the library, do check it out. Hell, it’s worth your time even to flip through its pages for the pictures, read a chapter or two, and appreciate a rare example of excellent literary design.
Something that I tried, and failed to follow through, last year.↩
The logistics were unusual enough, and Marcin cared enough, to give his readers instructions on how to unpack the book from its shipping box.↩
The book also explores many of its related cousins, like the linotype and the lunar module control panel.↩